A power cut, candlelight, a father’s stories… then nightfall, and walls that begin to tremble.
One Saturday evening, after a day when the electricity had been cut off, night fell over our neighbourhood, wrapping every house in a thick, palpable darkness. The streets, usually brought to life by the flickering glow of the streetlamps, were plunged into total blackness, as if the world had been swallowed by a sea of shadows. Coming home after a long day of football, I found my family gathered in the living room, lit by the trembling glow of candles. Their light danced on the walls, casting strange shadows that seemed to come alive, stretched out by the dark corners of the room. We spent the evening talking, listening for the umpteenth time as my father told his “incredible” story, from the school in his village lost in the mountains of West Cameroon to one of the most prestigious universities in Brussels. These moments of sharing, routine as they were, carried a comforting warmth, a simplicity that hid the invisible threat prowling in the shadows, ready to strike.
It was past midnight when I slipped into bed, my cousin Jack asleep beside me. The night was strangely silent, disturbed only by the rare shafts of moonlight that pierced the curtains, tracing ghostly patterns on the floor. The calm was almost unsettling, like the calm before a storm. But the silence did not last long. I had barely closed my eyes, trying as best I could to empty my mind and drift into the arms of Morpheus, when the trucks from the depot resumed their infernal procession. Their roaring engines echoed like funeral drums, each rumble seeping into the silence of the night, making the walls tremble, and my already frayed nerves with them.
The story continues in the book.